Roaming fees to decrease significantly

The European Parliament has decided to lower roaming fees by 65 percent over a two-year period.

10.05.2012

(CS) The European Parliament has decided to lower roaming fees by 65 percent over a two-year period.

In a first step, fees will decrease by 35 percent starting July 1, 2012. In 2013, the total reduction will be 45 percent, hitting the 65 percent total in 2014.

This will make mobile phone calls, text messages and data transfer significantly cheaper across EU borders.

In Luxembourg, the current maximum roaming fee for making a call while in a foreign country is 40.25 euro cents. By 2014 this will be capped at 21.85 euro cents. Fees for received calls will decrease from 12.65 euro cents to 5.75 euro cents.

Text messaging roaming fees will also see a price drop from 12.65 euro cents to 6.90 euro cents. Data transfer, which is currently not regulated will see a maximum fee of 23 euro cents per MB by 2014.

Four providers share 80% of market

While the move marks a success for anti-roaming-fee proponents, the Luxembourg delegate at the European Parliament Robert Goebbels commented that the EU member states were still in the clutches of the mobile communications industry.

The mobile phone providers Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, Orange and Telefonica currently share 80 percent of the roaming market directly or via business alliances. Goebbels commented that this led to the non-sensical fact that a phone call from Luxembourg to Thionville was more expensive than one from Thionville to Nice.

Goebbels urged the European Commission to put forward plans to abolish roaming fees altogether by 2016.